Cristiano Ronaldo

I just witnessed one of the greatest footballing comebacks in history as Liverpool came back from 3-0 down to beat Barcelona 4-0 at home and advance to the finals of the Champions League.

I missed the Manchester City-Tottenham match which ended 4-3 and after the first leg had ended 1-0, with video refereeing providing real drama towards the end, so I feel extra fortunate to have been able to witness this match.

Football may be just a game but it certainly does have its highs and it really can be an emotional roller-coaster.

In a week which contained a lot of major news from the secular world, it might seem odd that my highlights are to do with an event that didn't even take this week - the Chartres pilgrimage. My primary concern is for the Church, for only the Church can save the world, and with that in mind I shall go on to address some of the events on the Chartes pilgrimage.

It is rather significant that the Chartres pilgrimage has become so famous. I had not even heard of it until som 4 years ago or so, but I shall have to agree with Michael Matt that it is one of the most significant events taking place in the Church today, although in his case he plainly states that it is the most significant, with which I do not quite agree. Along with its increasing profile, the mass has attracted higher profiles of celebrants. Last year it was Cardinal Raymond Burke, who is probably the closest thing we have right now to a champion of the faith. When Cardinal Burke celebrated though, it was without a position in the Curia, having been unceremoniously kicked out of his position as the head of the Apostolic Signatura (the Church's highest court) so that Bergoglio could railroad his full-throttled assault on marriage through easy annulments and sacreligious Communion.

This year's celebrant, therefore, would have to count as the most high-profile yet. In Cardinal Sarah, we had the head of the Congregation of Divine Worship, the man in charge of not only the Mass but the administration of all sacraments. Yes, there are bureaucratically speaking other higher-profiled cardinals - the secreatary of state comes to mind - and even with regards to Catholicity the prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith ranks higher. However, in his capacity as head of worship, he ranks second only to the pope, so one is entitled to say that they don't come much higher than Cardinal Sarah. Also in terms of standing up for the faith, Cardinal Sarah is one of only 2 cardinals under the age of 80 - the other being Cardinal Burke - who have consistently stood up against efforts to water down the faith, or to outright corrupt the faith (however tepidly).

It was therefore with great sadness that I read a piece written by Peter Kwasniewski titled Traditional Clergy: Please Stop Making “Pastoral Adaptations”. It quickly became clear that the piece was about the final High Mass at the Chartres pilgrimage, of which Cardinal Sarah had been the main celebrant. Among the 'pastoral adaptations' on show was reading both the Epistle and the Gospel in French, instead of Latin, and not bothering with having the proper orientations when reading Sacred Scripture, instead turning towards the people, and not even bothering to chant but rather speaking it out instead. These were grave liturgical abuses. It is unclear who was in charge of these abuses - the master of ceremony, the local bishop, or the cardinal are all potential agents. What cannot be denied, however, was that in perhaps the most prominent Tridentine Mass in the world today, we were being confronted with a very well-orchestrated Novusordoisation, and that ought to trouble us all.

If there is anything that the Novus Ordo has taught us, it is that slippery slopes are real, and once embarked upon one will quickly find oneself close to the bottom. It is therefore inexcusable that at the most prominent Tridentine Mass the celebrants would embark upon the same slippery slope which led us to where we are in NOChurch today, i.e., little if any reverence at Mass, with priests who treat the Mass as if it is their plaything, and laity who froth in anger at hearing that there are authentic Catholic alternatives. Another point that Dr. Kwasniewski made which is worth repeating is that Latin is the language of the Church, and the Chartres pilgrimage is the most international pilgrimage that we have today. It therefore makes little sense to have the readings in French when many of the attendees will be non-French. They could, if they so wished, read out in Latin according to the rubrics and then afterwards read in French (which is allowed by Ecclesia Dei, it turns out, although even that is a slippery slope) but that's not what they did. In other words, I am quite certain that whoever made the decision did it knowing full well that it was against the liturgical laws and against the spirit of the Tridentine Mass, yet did it anyway, perhaps to force the point that the Tridentine Mass has to get along with the Novus Ordo mass.

This being NOChurch times, of course, not everyone was upset. As I have previously mentioned, Catholics as a whole have lost the ability to get angry at anything directed against the faith. In "WHEREIN ROBERT CARDINAL SARAH GETS IT RIGHT AND FATHER Z DOESN'T " (I've no idea why he insists on capital letters for his headlines), a response to Fr. John Zuhlsdorf's Why we Say The Black and Do The Red, which was in turn a commentary on what Dr. Kwasniewski had wrriten , Fr. Allan McDonald chimed in that Cardinal Sarah was right to make adaptations in order to get people to feel at home, once again showing that the Novus Ordo has poisoned the minds of even many of those who say the Tridentine Mass occasionally. We don't adapt the Mass to ourselves; rather we adapt ourselves to the Mass, and the arguments he was making were well-adressed in Dr. Kwasniewski's original piece, which it seems blew completely over his head.

The best commentary on Fr. McDonald's piece came from Henry , who wrote:

A single instance of vernacular abuse, as at Chartres, is not a big deal. No doubt God will survive the desacralization of a couple of moments in this one Mass, and the

It was Easter week, and a good week it was indeed. Whatever else happens in the world cannot take away from the joy of the Resurrection.

Easter Sunday this year fell on April Fool's day, and Mundabor took the time to make an Easter confession regarding how he had met a new younger woman and in order to seek happiness he was obliged to follow his emotions and leave his family for her. I recognised it as an April Fools' day immediately, having followed his blog for long enough to realise that he would come up with one, and having learned enough of the man to realise that he would keep his adultery secret, as any half-decent man would, instead of parade it about.

Sadly, not everyone was in on this and we had some of our lost Catholic sheep advising him to have an annulment enough so as to put a NOChurch stamp on his adultery. This again re-inforces the point I have made many times that the annulment process today is little more than a Catholic divorce and furthermore, that is how most Catholics seem to view it as well.

As the title pointed out, this was neck muscles training time and if there is one thing NOChurch is good at it is getting me to shake my head on account of the sheer volume of the sheer madness which I witness and read about. Shaking one's head is all one can do at times and I admit that I am forced to do it quite often. I can admit that I never thought I would see the words "drone" and "Blessed Sacrament" in the same sentence, and we have to thank NOChurch for making that happen, I suppose.

Having experienced the pre-1950s Holy Week celebration, Jeff Ostrowski came to realise that he was wrong to Dread the “Pre-1955” Holy Week. One of the most peculiar thing about it was that the vigil was held in the morning - which even I find a bit odd - but he wrote that it didn't seem out of place. That it was much longer did not seem to be as much of a drain as he had feared either.

It is not all bad news though, so, for instance, in Syria, rebuilding efforts are underway, now that the only major pockets of Islamists remaining are those in areas under American protection. This is exemplified by drone footage from Ghouta showing the clearing of a highway which has been blocked for a long time on account of the fighting.

It would hardly be a week's review if we did not have stories regarding Bergoglio's ongoing efforts to destroy the Catholic Church and the Catholic Faith. This week's entries are varied but I shall only pass over them in brief.

Louie Verrechio had is take on Bergoglioism in a piece titled "Bergoglianism: An effort to rewrite the Divine Law" which details how Bergoglio's strategy in fighting the Faith is to reduce it to mere rules and ideals. In "Is Francis Catholic? The burden of proof" he lays out the case that it is simply not enough to presume that bergoglio is a Catholic until proven otherwise, on account of the fact that he was baptised as one and presumably is in charge of the Catholic Church. No, rather he argues that "there are well-established criteria that must be met in order for one to legitimately lay claim to such membership". This is in accordance with the Encyclical Mystici Corporis written by Pius XII.

Bergoglio has, of course, demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that he absolutely abhors Holy Mother Church and the Catholic Faith which she...